Intel Arc Pro A60 vs NVIDIA Quadro GP100 Comparison

The NVIDIA Quadro GP100 and Intel Arc Pro A60 represent two very different philosophies of professional GPU design, separated by a wide gap in architecture, process technology, and measured performance. The GP100 is an end-of-life Pascal-generation flagship workstation card built around HBM2 memory and a large 610 mm² die, while the Arc Pro A60 is an actively produced Alchemist-series card on a much denser 6 nm process with a smaller footprint, lower power draw, and modern display and API support. The database shows a decisive single-result advantage for the GP100 in the one benchmark where both cards have recorded scores, but the A60 counters with contemporary features the older card simply cannot match. What follows is a detailed breakdown of where each one wins and why.

FAQ

Q: Which card is faster in the recorded benchmark data?

A: The Quadro GP100. In Geekbench OpenCL the GP100 scores 87,445 against the Arc Pro A60's 63,485, a 37.7% advantage. That gap is the only direct head-to-head measurement in the database, and it is large enough that the GP100's overall standing, the 93rd percentile of all GPUs, versus the A60's 88th percentile, reflects the same ordering.

Q: How does each card compare to its own nearest rivals?

A: The GP100 sits effectively level with the AMD Radeon PRO W7600 (average score 87,108, a delta of just 0.4%), slightly ahead of the NVIDIA CMP 40HX (85,637, 2.1% behind the GP100), and modestly behind the NVIDIA RTX A4500 Mobile (91,134, 4% ahead) and the RTX A4500 (91,671, 4.6% ahead). The A60's rival set is anchored by an average score of 60,326, placing it within a fraction of a percent of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090's recorded average of 60,347 in that comparison cluster, 0.3% ahead of the Radeon Pro Vega 48 (60,140), 2.5% behind the Radeon Pro W6600M (61,896), and 2.8% ahead of the Radeon PRO V710 (58,657).

Q: Which card has more memory bandwidth?

A: The GP100, by a wide margin. Its HBM2 subsystem delivers 732.2 GB/s across a 4096-bit bus, nearly double the A60's 384.0 GB/s across a 192-bit GDDR6 bus. The A60's memory runs at 16 Gbps effective versus 1430 Mbps effective for the GP100's HBM2, but the GP100's vastly wider bus wins the bandwidth contest decisively.

Q: Which card is more power efficient?

A: The A60. Its TDP is 130 W versus 235 W for the GP100, and it requires no auxiliary power connectors at all, drawing everything from the slot, while the GP100 needs a single 8-pin connector. The suggested PSU ratings reflect this: 300 W for the A60 versus 550 W for the GP100.

Q: Are both cards still in production?

A: No. The GP100 is end-of-life, released in September 2016 as part of the Quadro Pascal generation with the Quadro Volta line as its successor. The Arc Pro A60 is active, released in June 2023 as part of Intel's Alchemist Pro Series.

Q: Which card supports more modern graphics APIs and display standards?

A: The A60. It supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), Vulkan 1.4, and four DisplayPort 2.0 outputs. The GP100 stops at DirectX 12 (12_1), Vulkan 1.3, and DisplayPort 1.4a, plus a DVI output, reflecting its earlier era.

Where Each One Wins

The GP100 wins on raw compute throughput and memory subsystem strength, and the recorded data makes this unambiguous. Its Geekbench OpenCL score of 87,445 is 37.7% higher than the A60's 63,485, and its average benchmark score of 87,445 across the database likewise exceeds the A60's 60,326 average. For general-purpose GPU compute, OpenCL workloads, and any professional application that leans on raw floating-point throughput or memory bandwidth, the GP100 is the stronger card in the measurements. Its FP32 throughput of 10.34 TFLOPS beats the A60's 8.397 TFLOPS, and its FP16 throughput of 20.69 TFLOPS exceeds the A60's 16.79 TFLOPS. The 732.2 GB/s of HBM2 bandwidth makes it especially suited to bandwidth-hungry compute kernels, data-intensive simulation, and large-dataset processing where the A60's 384.0 GB/s would become the limiting factor.

The A60 wins on efficiency, physical format, feature currency, and memory capacity per era of software. Its 130 W TDP and single-slot, connector-free design make it viable in compact workstations and systems with limited power delivery, something the dual-slot, 8-pin-fed GP100 cannot claim. It carries 16 dedicated ray tracing cores, a hardware capability the GP100 entirely lacks, alongside DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2) support, which the GP100's 12_1 feature level cannot reach. Its PCIe 4.0 x16 interface doubles the host link standard of the GP100's PCIe 3.0 x16. The A60 also holds an advantage in one raw output metric that surprises given the compute gap: its 2050 MHz boost clock is far higher than the GP100's 1443 MHz, evidence of how much process technology advanced between the two designs. For ray tracing-enabled viewport work, modern API-driven applications, and dense multi-card or small-form-factor deployments, the A60 is the practical choice.

Neither card wins outright. The database frames this as a compute-versus-efficiency split, and the buyer's workload decides which column matters.

Architecture Differences

These cards come from fundamentally different architectural lineages. The GP100 is NVIDIA's Pascal architecture, fabricated on TSMC's 16 nm process, packing 15,300 million transistors onto a 610 mm² die for a density of 25.1M transistors per mm². The A60 uses Intel's Xe-HPG architecture under the Alchemist Pro Series, fabricated on TSMC's 6 nm process with 11,500 million transistors on a 269 mm² die, yielding 42.8M transistors per mm². The density advantage of the newer node is substantial, and it lets the A60 deliver its feature set from a die less than half the GP100's area.

The shader configuration reflects the generational divide. The GP100 fields 3584 shading units, 224 TMUs, and 96 ROPs, giving it a texture rate of 323.2 GTexel/s and a pixel rate of 138.5 GPixel/s. The A60's 2048 shading units, 128 TMUs, and 64 ROPs produce 262.4 GTexel/s and 131.2 GPixel/s respectively. Notably, the pixel rates are closer than the compute numbers, at 138.5 versus 131.2 GPixel/s, because the A60's much higher boost clock partially compensates for its smaller rasterization hardware.

The memory subsystems are architecturally opposite. The GP100 uses HBM2, a 4096-bit wide stacked interface running at 1430 Mbps effective across 16 GB, delivering 732.2 GB/s. The A60 uses conventional GDDR6 on a 192-bit bus running at 16 Gbps effective across 12 GB, delivering 384.0 GB/s. The GP100 also holds the larger capacity, 16 GB versus 12 GB. Feature-wise, the A60 includes 16 ray tracing cores; the GP100 has no RT cores and no tensor cores, as neither is listed in its record.

Specification Differences

The specification table diverges on nearly every line. Clocking: the GP100 runs a 1304 MHz base and 1443 MHz boost, while the A60 runs 900 MHz base and 2050 MHz boost. Power: 235 W TDP with a single 8-pin connector and a 550 W suggested PSU for the GP100, against 130 W TDP with no power connectors and a 300 W suggested PSU for the A60. Form factor: the GP100 is dual-slot with recorded dimensions of 267 mm length and 111 mm height; the A60 is single-slot with no recorded dimensions.

The bus interface differs, PCIe 3.0 x16 versus PCIe 4.0 x16. Display outputs differ: the GP100 offers one DVI and four DisplayPort 1.4a, while the A60 offers four DisplayPort 2.0. API support differs as detailed above, with Vulkan 1.3 versus 1.4 and DirectX 12_1 versus 12 Ultimate. Production status splits them, end-of-life versus active, as do the release dates of September 2016 and June 2023. The GP100 has a recorded lineage, Quadro Maxwell before it and Quadro Volta after; the A60 has neither a predecessor nor a successor listed. No launch MSRP is recorded for either card.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The database contains one direct head-to-head result, and it is one-sided. In Geekbench OpenCL, the Quadro GP100 scores 87,445 while the Arc Pro A60 scores 63,485, a 37.7% margin for the GP100. The A60 records 0 head-to-head wins against the GP100's 1.

Context from each card's rival cluster sharpens the picture. The GP100's 87,445 average places it statistically level with the AMD Radeon PRO W7600 (87,108) and ahead of the NVIDIA CMP 40HX (85,637), while trailing the RTX A4500 Mobile (91,134) and RTX A4500 (91,671) by single-digit percentages. The A60's 60,326 average puts it in a band with the GeForce RTX 4090's cluster average (60,347), the Radeon Pro Vega 48 (60,140), the Radeon Pro W6600M (61,896), and the Radeon PRO V710 (58,657). In percentile terms, the GP100 sits at the 93rd percentile of all GPUs in the database versus the A60's 88th.

The verdict from the recorded data is clear on throughput: the GP100's combination of 10.34 TFLOPS FP32, 20.69 TFLOPS FP16, and 732.2 GB/s of HBM2 bandwidth translates into a commanding OpenCL lead. But that verdict carries a caveat the specification table makes plain. The A60 delivers its performance at just over half the TDP, from a single-slot card with no auxiliary power, with ray tracing hardware, PCIe 4.0, DisplayPort 2.0, and current API support, and it remains in active production while the GP100 has reached end-of-life. For pure compute where power and footprint are not constraints, the GP100 wins the numbers. For a modern, efficient, supported deployment, the A60 is the only option of the two still being made.